Joel Slotte

The pungent smell of marsh Labrador tea fills my nostrils, pressing against an ingrown nose hair. My skin is sticky and sensitive to the prickly grass, while waiting for the approaching thunderstorm. My tongue, scratched by chips, wipes the street dust from my inflamed red gums. Everything feels and shows too much, as if on a perfectly lit midden.

When I paint, every square centimeter becomes equally important and I have to paint the entire canvas with the same level of devotion. I enjoy the slowness of painting and I don’t want to be sparing with the hours it takes. When I take my time, I am able to let my paintings meander restlessly from the original theme towards something new, randomly suggesting new connections between things. Working with individual paintings for long periods of time also produces temporal crystallizations and layers. They give the depictions in the paintings their own historical and mythological deposits.

Joel Slotte (b. 1987, Kokkola) lives and works in Helsinki. He earned his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Fine Arts (University of the Arts Helsinki) in 2016. His exhibition features figurative oil paintings based on furious sensuality and restless narrative.

The exhibition has been supported by the Kone Foundation, the Paulo Foundation and Svenska kulturfonden.